The wagon-master informed me that he had lost about one-third of the oxen, which had stampeded and ran off in a storm; also my two saddle horses, and his one and only saddle horse had gone with the cattle. He said they had been gone about six weeks, so I struck out to Fort Hall to try and buy a horse to ride to hunt up the lost stock.
I succeeded in buying a very poor excuse of a horse for a hundred dollars, that under any other circumstances I would not have accepted as a gracious gift. But it was "Hopkins' choice," that or none. Mounting my crow-bait, I struck out in a westerly direction to look for the stock.
Three days' ride from the fort I struck plenty of cattle sign. They were apparently heading for Wood river, and after following their trail about two miles, I discovered two horse tracks, which convinced me it was the stock I was looking for. The next morning I found them and the cattle were all there with the exception of three. One of my horses was there, but the other one was missing, the wagon-master's horse was also there. I succeeded in catching my horse and turned loose the one I had bought and left him there for wolf-bait, provided they would eat him, mounted my saddle horse, and turned the stock in the direction of camp. It took me five days to drive them to our camp on the river, making ten days in all since I had started out. We stayed there three weeks longer, and the grass being good, by that time the stock was looking well.
All this time we were expecting a Mormon train on the other side would cross over and break the road as they were not loaded, but not seeing any sign of them, the wagon-boss got tired of waiting, and hitching up, pulled about twenty miles to the edge of the snow.
We were two days making this twenty miles. Here we stopped, but the wagon-master and I started next morning on foot for the summit. While we were on the mountain we could hear the other train coming so we walked on to meet it and see if we could assist them in any way. They were taking a very wise plan for it; two men riding ahead on horseback, others were driving about forty head of loose stock behind them, all followed by the wagons.
They got to our camp that night about dark. This tram broke the road in good shape for us, and the following morning the boss put all of the oxen to half the wagons and pulled across. It took us nearly all day to get out of the snow on the other side, thereby taking us three days to cross the mountains.
I traveled with the train three days after crossing the mountains, and then I left and rode on to Virginia City, knowing that Boone and Bivian would be anxious for information.
This was the first train of the season, and when it arrived flour was worth one dollar per pound, bacon fifty cents, and everything else in proportion.